Non-equilibrium stimulation of superfluidity in trapped Fermi gases is discussed by analogy to the work of Eliashberg [G. M. Eliashberg, in "Nonequilibrium Superconductivity," edited by D. N. Langenberg and A. I. Larkin (North-Holland, New York, 1986)] on the microwave enhancement of superconductivity. Optical excitation of the fermions balanced by heat loss due to thermal contact with a boson bath and/or evaporative cooling enables stationary non-equilibrium states to exist. Such a state manifests as a shift of the quasiparticle spectrum to higher energies and this effect effectively raises the pairing transition temperature. As an illustration, we calculate the effective enhancement of Cooper pairing and superfluidity in both the normal and superfluid phases for a mixture of Rb and Li in the limit of small departure from equilibrium. It is argued that in experiment the desirable effect is not limited to such small perturbations and the effective enhancement of the pairing temperature may be quite large.
Geometric frustration in quantum magnetism refers to that magnetic interactions on different bonds cannot be simultaneously minimized. The usual Cooper pairing systems favor the uniform distribution of the pairing phase among lattice sites without frustration. In contrast, we propose "frustrated Cooper pairing" in non-bipartite lattices which leads to frustrated supersolid states with non-uniform distributions of the Cooper pair phase and density. This exotic pairing state naturally occurs in the $p$-orbital band in optical lattices with ultra-cold spinless fermions. In the triangular lattice,…
Recently, cold atomic Fermi gases with the large magnetic dipolar interaction have been laser cooled down to quantum degeneracy. Different from electric-dipoles which are classic vectors, atomic magnetic dipoles are quantum-mechanical matrix operators proportional to the hyperfine-spin of atoms, thus provide rich opportunities to investigate exotic many-body physics. Furthermore, unlike anisotropic electric dipolar gases, unpolarized magnetic dipolar systems are isotropic under simultaneous spin-orbit rotation. These features give rise to a robust mechanism for a novel pairing symmetry: orbita…
The tremendous development of cold atom physics has opened up a whole new opportunity to study novel states of matter which are not easily accessible in solid state systems. Here we propose to realize the $f$-wave pairing superfluidity of spinless fermions in the $p_{x,y}$-orbital bands of the two dimensional honeycomb optical lattices. The non-trivial orbital band structure rather than strong correlation effects gives rise to the unconventional pairing with the nodal lines of the $f$-wave symmetry. With a confining harmonic trap, zero energy Andreev bound states appear around the circular bou…
Correlation properties in ultracold Fermi gas with negative scattering length and its impact on the three-body recombination is analyzed. We find that Cooper pairing enhances the recombination rate in contrast to the decrease of this rate accompanying Bose-Einstein condensation in a Bose gas. This trend is characteristic for all interval of temperatures T<Tc.
The symmetry properties of the Cooper pairing problem for multi-component ultra-cold dipolar molecular systems are investigated. The dipolar anisotropy provides a natural and robust mechanism for both triplet and singlet Cooper pairing to first order in the interaction strength. With a purely dipolar interaction, the triplet $p_z$-like polar pairing is the most dominant. A short-range attractive interaction can enhance the singlet pairing to be nearly degenerate with the triplet pairing. We point out that these two pairing channels can mix by developing a relative phase of $\pm\fracπ{2}$, thus…
We investigate the specific heat at constant volume $C_V$ in the BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer)-BEC (Bose-Einstein condensation) crossover regime of an ultracold Fermi gas above the superfluid phase transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$. Within the framework of the strong-coupling theory developed by Nozières and Schmitt-Rink, we show that this thermodynamic quantity is sensitive to the stability of preformed Cooper pairs. That is, while $C_V(T\gesim T_{\rm c})$ in the unitary regime is remarkably enhanced by {\it metastable} preformed Cooper pairs or pairing fluctuations, it is well described b…
The rapid experimental progress of ultra-cold dipolar fermions opens up a whole new opportunity to investigate novel many-body physics of fermions. In this article, we review theoretical studies of the Fermi liquid theory and Cooper pairing instabilities of both electric and magnetic dipolar fermionic systems from the perspective of unconventional symmetries. When the electric dipole moments are aligned by the external electric field, their interactions exhibit the explicit $d_{r^2-3z^2}$ anisotropy. The Fermi liquid properties, including the single-particle spectra, thermodynamic susceptibili…
We theoretically investigate in-medium two- and three-body correlations in one-dimensional two-component Fermi gases with coexistent even-parity s-wave and odd-parity p-wave interactions. We find the solutions of the stable in-medium three-body cluster states such as Cooper triple by solving the corresponding in-medium variational equations. We further feature the phase diagram consisting of the s- and p-wave Cooper pairing phase, and Cooper tripling phase, in the plane of s- and p-wave pairing strengths. The Cooper tripling phase dominates over the pairing phases when both s- and p-wave inter…
Despite the multi-band spectrum of the widely-known Hofstadter butterfly, it turns out that the pairing correlations of the time-reversal-symmetric Hofstadter-Hubbard model are well-described by a single order parameter that is uniform in real space. By exploiting a BCS mean-field theory for the nearly-flat butterfly-bands regime of low magnetic-flux limit, here we reveal a number of unusual superfluid properties both in the ground state and at finite temperatures. Our thorough analysis includes but is not limited to the order parameter, condensate and superfluid fractions, and the critical BC…
We study the interplay between the Zeeman field and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in harmonically trapped Fermi gases loaded into a two-dimensional single-band tight-binding optical lattice. Using the Bogoliubov-de Gennes theory, we find that the Zeeman field combined with a Rashba SOC gives rise to $(i)$ Fulde-Ferrell-like superfluidity and $(ii)$ skyrmion-like polarization textures near the edges of the system. We also discussed the effects of interaction, temperature, SOC anisotropy and Zeeman field anisotropy on the superfluid ground state and polarization textures.
Similar to what has recently been achieved with Bose-Bose mixtures [Lamporesi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 153202 (2010)], mixed-dimensional Fermi-Fermi mixtures can be created by applying a species-selective one-dimensional optical lattice to a two-species Fermi gas ($σ\equiv \{\uparrow, \downarrow \}$), such a way that only one of the species feel the lattice potential and is confined to a quasi-two-dimensional geometry, while having negligible effect on the other, that is leaving it three dimensional. We investigate the ground state phase diagram of superfluidity for such mixtures in the B…
Within the context of Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory, we study the behavior of superfluid Fermi systems when they pass from a small to a large container. Such systems can be now realized thanks to recent progress in experimental techniques. It will allow to better understand pairing properties at overflow and in general in rapidly varying external potentials.
Ultracold atomic gases and low-density neutron matter are unique in that they exhibit pairing gaps comparable to the Fermi energy which in this sense are the largest in the laboratory and in nature, respectively. This strong pairing regime, or the crossover between BCS and BEC regimes, requires non-perturbative treatments. We describe Quantum Monte Carlo results useful to understand the properties of these systems, including infinite homogeneous matter and trapped inhomogeneous gases.
We describe the emergence of color superfluidity in ultra-cold fermions induced by color-orbit and color-flip fields that transform a conventional singlet-pairing s-wave system into an unconventional non-s-wave superfluid with quintuplet pairing. We show that the tuning of interactions, color-orbit and color-flip fields transforms a momentum-independent scalar order parameter into an explicitly momentum-dependent tensor order parameter. We classify all unconventional superfluid phases in terms of the {\it loci} of zeros of their quasi-particle excitation spectrum in momentum space and we ident…
The pairing properties of ultracold fermions, with an attractive interaction, loaded in a honeycomb (graphene-like) optical lattice are studied in a mean-field approach. We emphasize, in the presence of a harmonic trap, the unambiguous signatures of the linear dispersion relation of the band structure around half-filling (i.e. the massless Dirac fermions) in the local order parameter, in particular in the situations of either imbalance hoping parameters or imbalance populations. It can also be observed in the system response to external perturbation, for instance by measuring the pair destruct…
We discuss the preparation of many-body states of cold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice via controlled dissipative processes induced by coupling the system to a reservoir. Based on a mechanism combining Pauli blocking and phase locking between adjacent sites, we construct complete sets of jump operators describing coupling to a reservoir that leads to dissipative preparation of pairing states for fermions with various symmetries in the absence of direct inter-particle interactions. We discuss the uniqueness of these states, and demonstrate it with small-scale numerical simulations. In the…
We apply the functional path-integral approach to analyze how the presence of a spin-orbit coupling (SOC) affects the basic properties of a BCS-type paired state in a two-component Bose gas. In addition to a mean-field theory that is based on the saddle-point approximation for the inter-component pairing, we derive a Ginzburg-Landau theory by including the Gaussian fluctuations on top, and use them to reveal the crucial roles played by the momentum-space structure of an arbitrary SOC field in the stability of the paired state at finite temperatures. For this purpose, we calculate the critical …
The spectra of $N$-boson systems with arbitrary nonzero spin $\mathfrak{f}$ have been studied. Firstly, only the singlet pairing interaction is considered, a set of eigenstates together with the eigenenergies are analytically obtained. The completeness of this set is proved. The analytical expression allows us to see clearly the spin structures of various states different in $N$ and/or $\mathfrak{f}$, and to find out the similarity and relationship lying among them. Secondly, the effect of other interactions is evaluated via exact numerical calculations on the systems with a smaller $N$. Some …
Motivated by recent experiments on atomic Dirac fermions in a tunable honeycomb optical lattice, we study the attractive Hubbard model of superfluidity in the anisotropic honeycomb lattice. At weak-coupling, we find that the maximum mean field pairing transition temperature, as a function of density and interaction strength, occurs for the case with isotropic hopping amplitudes. In this isotropic case, we go beyond mean field theory and study collective fluctuations, treating both pairing and density fluctuations for interaction strengths ranging from weak to strong coupling. We find evidence …
Recent studies in the realization of Majorana fermion (MF) quasiparticles have focused on engineering topological superconductivity by combining conventional superconductors and spin-textured electronic materials. We propose an effective model to create unpaired MFs at a honeycomb lattice edge by generalizing a 2-dimensional topologically nontrivial Haldane model and introducing textured pairings. The core idea is to add both the spin-singlet and textured spin-triplet pairings to a pseudospin-state dependent, time-reversal symmetry (TRS) noninvariant honeycomb lattice, and to satisfy generaliz…
We build a holographic model for the pairing fluctuation pseudogap phase in fermionic high temperature superconductivity/superfluidity based on the BCS-BEC crossover scenario. The pseudogap originates from incoherent Cooper pairing and has been observed in recent cold atom experiments. The strength of Cooper pairing and hence the BCS-BEC crossover is controlled by an effective 4-Fermi interaction and we argue that the double-trace deformation for charged scalar operator is a close analog in large N field theories. We employ the double-trace deformed Abelian Higgs model of holographic supercond…
To realize non-Abelian s-wave topological superfluid (TS) of cold Fermi gases, generally a Zeeman magnetic field larger than superfluid pairing gap is necessary. In this paper we find that using an anisotropic and spin-dependent optical lattice (ASDOL) to trap gases, a new non-Abelian TS phase appears, in contrast to an isotropic and spin-independent optical lattice. A characteristic of this new non-Abelian TS is that Zeeman magnetic field can be smaller than the superfluid pairing gap. By self-consistently solving pairing gap equation and considering the competition against normal state and p…
We present an ab initio determination of spin responses of the unitary Fermi gas, based on finite temperature quantum Monte Carlo calculations and the Kubo linear-response formalism. We determine the temperature dependence of the spin susceptibility and the spin conductivity. We show that both quantities exhibit suppression above the critical temperature of the superfluid to normal phase transition due to presence of the Cooper pairs. The spin diffusion transport coefficient does not display the existence of a minimum in the vicinity of the critical temperature and it drops to very low values …
Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer State Representation and Pairing in the Fermionic Tonks-Girardeau Gas
Universitat de Barcelona(巴塞罗那大学);Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona(巴塞罗那大学宇宙科学研究所);Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya(加泰罗尼亚理工大学)
We show how Cooper-pair-assisted transport, which describes the stimulated transport of electrons in the presence of Cooper-pairs, can be engineered and controlled with cold atoms, in regimes that are difficult to access for condensed matter systems. Our model is a channel connecting two cold atomic gases, and the mechanism to generate such a transport relies on the coupling of the channel to a molecular BEC, with diatomic molecules of fermionic atoms. Our results are obtained using a Floquet-Redfield master equation that accounts for an exact treatment of the interaction between atoms in the …